chaoticsoul

I watched her stir in the background of my reflection in the mirror. She wasn’t quite awake, not really asleep, no more than the drug could make her in its weakening state. She’d have a raging headache, I knew, and I’d accommodated it with some Tylenol, and water I’d have to help her swallow.

The bonds were a regrettable necessity. She’d already surprised me once in my life, and I didn’t need a second reminder that size wasn’t an indicator of temerity. I met my own gaze in the glass and frowned. I’d hoped to meet my conscience eventually, but was finding it hard to face now that I had. On some level, it was a refreshing change, on another, it disquieted me in a way I doubt I’d be able to grasp anytime soon.

She wasn’t the reason for my newly found discontentment. While I resented her decisions from our joint past, I didn’t really fault her for making them. Survival is an almost unbeatable need. It’s how I’d gotten where I was now; clinging to each scrap of life I could by making whatever decisions I could. I didn’t waste time anymore wondering what could have been had I been a better person, I just acted. I survived.

I turned and watched her. She was always more Dante’s friend than my own. I realized that I didn’t know her age, but guessed her to be somewhere around Dante’s – nine years younger than me. Those were the days before Dad died, before Mom turned into…well, what she had to become to survive.

When I left, I left them all. I hated that place and the stink of poverty that clung to me like a second skin. Want was a gnawing ache in my stomach. It didn’t take me long to find another way to live. The money saved Dante. It was too late to save my mother.

Annerire had obviously found her own way out of the gutter. Looks can do that for a woman, but she wasn’t the sort to sell herself. I’d have tried that when I first saw her again if it weren’t for Dante’s comment to me. ‘She’s always had a crush on you.’

Instead I seduced her. Used her. She ended it long before I would have even thought to be finished with her. Hell, standing here now, three years later, I wasn’t even done. She owed me this slight detour in her life, I reminded myself. I’d saved her neck personally by extending my own. She didn’t know. I’d kept her in the dark about so much of my life, I didn’t know where the lies ended and the truth began.

Dante, he knew what I was, and had learned to be cavalier in a way that masked what I suspected was a measured disappointment. He never showed it. I just knew.

Annerire woke with a startled jerk of her head off of the pillow just before she dropped it back down. I studied her quietly, taking a seat at the bar. She hadn’t found me yet, slowly registering the changes that were before her eyes since the last time they were open.

A muffled noise emerged from behind the tape. Lucio was nothing if not thorough -although, not many people would bother to even make a phone call for a random scream heard in the park. I didn’t bother to take it off because, here, in this quiet expanse of desert, it served my purposes. I liked the quiet. I liked having her cell be miles of rocky terrain and deadly summer heat.

It wasn’t my house. Like so much of my life, the ease and smoothness came from greasing the wheels on someone else’s journey. I felt her gaze fall on me and stared back. I wondered if the choking sound told me just how welcome a sight I was.